Reply #11: Perspective from a South African here

[FarrenH]

Specifically a white, left leaning, urban South African.

South Africa has huge problems with crime. Its our single biggest problem at the moment. For murders, we're second only to Colombia. Its not just a rural problem and its not just white victims. If anything, black women living in the sprawling squatter camps around Johannesburg are more likely to be raped than their white counterparts in the leafy suburbs. Simply by virtue of continuing economic dominance, whites are more likely to be victims of some crimes such as car hijackings, but blacks are far more vulnerable generally.

The Weekly Mail and Guardian, a highly respected weekly over here, ran an article last week about two police stations, one in a predominantly white suburb and one in a black "township" (a community created to isolate blacks under Apartheid, with all the bad roads and shitty infrastructure that implies - many black people still live in such places). The policing in the predominantly white suburb was immeasurably better. A black victim of crime in the latter area was told by police, after the second time she'd been robbed at a taxi rank (she was beaten and her top ripped off to get to the R10 in her bra), that she shouldn't bother reporting the crime unless she could name the attackers. The competence and commitment of police in the township is apparently such that they are effectively useless.

There have been several brutal, highly publicised farm murders. However, crime statistics indicate that crime in rural areas is substantially less than in urban areas. Limpopo, for instance, a province in the north of SA with a mostly rural population, had 1/10th the number of crimes per capita as Gauteng last year. Gauteng, to put it in perspective is SA's smallest province which, as home to both Johanneburg and Pretoria, is 90% covered in urban and suburban development. In fact two regions, Johannesburg and the sprawling townships around Cape Town, are the major cause for SA's terrible crime stats. My parents live an hour's fast drive away from Johannesburg, where the more rural Magaliesberg mountain region begins, on an 8 hectare plot. They sleep with their doors open so the dogs can wander freely in and out, in a neighbourhood where there hasn't been a crime reported in the last 8 months.

But to hear some white South Africans talk about it, you'd think all the criminals are black, all the victims are white and the police are just turning a blind eye to crimes committed against whites for political ends. The farming community appears to have an even more delusionary viewpoint. Despite actually being significantly safer than the residents of SA's two largest cities, hardly a day goes by when some largely white agricultural union isn't trumpeting the "genocide" in the countryside. In spite of this, authorities in the rural parts of the provinces of Limpopo, Northwest Province and Free State have complained that they have a problem following up on crimes because many white farmers refuse to deal with black policemen. The word I get from the street says that most of them are thoroughly convinced that every black policeman is basically in cahoots with (obviously black) criminals and are acting as their eyes and ears. Astonishingly enough the police have tried to accomodate them, but this often means lengthy delays until a white policeman is free to investigate a particular case.

While race relations have improved significantly in urban areas (which considering SA is 70% urbanised is a good thing), change has been far slower in the rural areas. The farmlands were the majority National Party's core, unwavering support base in the whites-only elected govt that perpetuated Apartheid. Friends I have who work or have worked in rural NGOs say that many farmers still run their farms like little fiefdoms and treat their workers like peons or worse. Despite legislation designed to protect farmworkers they're still considered massively vulnerable not just by left-leaning SA NGO's but by international aid agencies too. I've witnessed first hand the attitude of some of these people. Not two years ago I heard, firsthand, a white farmer narrating how a black worker forgot to water the animals so he "taught him a lesson" by tying him to a tree and leaving him there without food or drink for 24 hours (I don't want to digress to much so I'm not going to explain the circumstances under which I heard this firsthand). But of course, according to groups like the quoted TAU (if you read between the lines), white farmers are victims of ethnic cleansing. Not.


Lets look at the two key players in the OP: The TAU and the paper that reported their comments, The Citizen.

The TAU consists of roughly 6000 White, Afrikaans and extremely conservative farmers. Not to impugn all Afrikaners by association since many in the cities have undergone enormous changes in attitude, but the membership of the TAU is undoubtedly mostly the kind of guys who still yearn for the days of Volk, Vaderland and die kaffir in sy plek (the nigger in his place).

The Citizen is a contemptible rag. About 17 years ago when I did a brief stint as a journalist they had an awful reputation in the journalistic community. Firstly because of their slavish praise singing of the Nationalist government and secondly because of their shitty journalism. The fact that they were started as a propaganda mouthpiece for the Apartheid government was uncontested public knowledge, because half a decade earlier, it had emerged that a certain Mr Roodie had spent several million in taxpayers funds creating instruments of propaganda at home and abroad (including IIRC buying a small US rag). The Citizen was created entirely from those funds. The Info Scandal toppled several powerful politicians, but its acknowledged progeny, such as The Citizen, soldiered on with the same staff members, with the same loyalties to the Nat government.

Although the Citizen's readership has diminished significantly, it still has enough readership to peddle its constant low-key negativity, undershot with a barely concealed hankering for the old days. Astonishingly its even picked up some black readers, mostly I've gathered because they're unaware of its history and often miss the subtext (having English as as a second language). Also, in its commitment to continuously criticising the new order for anything it can lay its hands on, it ironically ends up on the side say of the poor and the halt (in order to criticise govt for lack of delivery). Not that criticism is a bad thing. But unlike newspapers worth the name like the Mail and Guardian, which criticize govt a lot, the Citizen does no real, investigative journalism. It just repeats whatever scandal or smut is common knowledge. And of course, white concerns are always amplified out of proportion.

Anyway, sorry for such a long post, but when I read the OP, so bereft of context I felt compelled to share the broader context from the point of view of someone who is (I like to think :) ) a keen and intelligent first hand observer of South African history, from the formerly privileged class - and is sick to death of some of my fellow white South Africans using their greater access to communication channels to make their lot seem far worse than that of their astonishingly forgiving countrymen of other hues.

This is not "Zim Redux". The government has nothing to do with it (apart from generally poorly run police departments). It is a 99% a crime problem seen through the lens of a largely racist perspective by people who imagine that the entire black race is conspiring against them. No doubt some there are racial dimensions to some of the crimes, since as a nation we're still obsessed with race, but they are incidental rather than the fruit of some imagined vast conspiracy. The primary motivators of crime are huge, visible wealth inequality (we have one of the worst GINI indexes in the world) and the inevitable aftershocks of a system that brutalised people, broke up families, displaced millions and destroyed indigenous culture without providing a viable alternative.